Rural Communities

Seven hours is extraordinary, but four hours, increasingly, is not. Roughly one out of every six American workers commutes more than forty-five minutes, each way.

"We already have lots of jobs in India — but also in Shanghai, Manila and Buffalo, N.Y.," he said. "We’re looking for the right location."

Nearly two decades into India’s phenomenal growth as an international center for high technology, the industry has a problem: It’s running out of workers.

Another company is shipping jobs to a remote land to find good workers for less money. In this case, the company is Microsoft Corp. But the faraway land is only two time zones away.

Employers agree that housing costs are becoming an issue when hiring. Companies have a harder time attracting and keeping workers and may even move where employees can afford homes. "Jobs follow workers," John McIlwain, a senior Urban Land Institute fellow, warned recently.

Soft real estate markets hurt worker mobility as relocation gets more costly – financially and emotionally.

Genentech says the lack of qualified applicants means the company is "scrambling" to grow. A drop over the past decade in the percentage of U.S. college graduates pursuing science is making the task harder.

With the competition for talented workers increasingly fierce, businesses across the nation are becoming ever more creative in their efforts to impress prospects.

Goulet said he was happy to hear Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. emphasize a strong education system, which Goulet said was an issue for Rossignol employees moving to Utah. "Kids today are our future employees," he said.

"Federal agencies have made a strong and growing commitment to meeting the government’s mandated telework requirements."